Retainage broken out by contract
Receivable and payable, instead of sitting in receivables looking collectible.
For Surety Agents
Reporting that supports the underwriting conversation.
Current contract records, WIP and retainage schedules give the conversation a clearer starting point. We handle the agreed accounting and reporting work; you handle the surety relationship.
Partner handoffA clear working relationship
- WIP schedule
- 01
- Retainage position
- 02
- Financial statements
- 03
Illustrative structure. Your scope is agreed together.
The responsibilities stay clear
No referral fees in either directionNo revenue sharingScope agreed with the client
What changes
The schedule stops being an annual reconstruction
Underbillings identified rather than buried
Work performed and not billed is real earned revenue. Presented properly it supports working capital. Presented poorly it doesn't exist for your purposes.
Estimates at completion that move
Cost-to-cost percent complete recalculated monthly against actual job cost, not carried forward from the bid.
Backlog reported alongside working capital
In the format you're going to ask for anyway.
Fewer follow-up questions
The package includes the schedule, the roll-forward showing what moved and why, and the supporting job cost detail.
The first submission
The ones who have never produced a schedule at all
A different account from the one above. A subcontractor comes to you because a general contractor asked him to bond a job he wants, and he has never been asked for any of this before. His books were built to produce a tax return.
There is no WIP schedule, not a stale one
Nothing to update and nothing to correct. It gets built from the contracts and the job cost history, and the first one is the one that takes time.
The books are on a cash basis
Which is the right answer for his return and the wrong one for your underwriter. Accrual gets maintained alongside it rather than replacing it.
Retainage is sitting inside receivables
Looking collectible and inflating current assets. Aged out by contract, receivable and payable, working capital reads as what it actually is.
The chart of accounts was built for a tax form
Not for job reporting, which is true of most inherited contractor books. Rebuilding it is the precondition for everything above rather than tidying, and it is the reason a first submission runs on a longer clock than a correction.
These usually take a season rather than a month, and it is worth knowing which kind of account you are looking at before you promise him anything.
Something to send him
The two documents to forward
For the contractor who has never produced a schedule. Send him these before you send him to us, or instead of sending him to us. If he can get there with the bookkeeper he already has, that is a better outcome for his file than a referral.
The Prequal Packet Checklist
Twenty-two items in four groups, with the nine financial ones marked and every line labelled by who produces it. Two pages. He can work it with whoever keeps his books.
Open the resource ↓The Sample Reporting Pack
What those nine items look like when they are produced every month instead of reconstructed on request. Five pages, built for a fictional contractor so the schedules can be read in full.
Open the resource ↓Both are free and neither one asks him for anything. There is no form in front of them on purpose: a document you forward should not arrive asking your contractor for his email address.
Where the line is
What we don't do
We don't place bonds, we don't have a view on which surety should write the account, and we're not building toward either. Refer freely.
Before you spend your credibility
What we tell you
If a referred contractor's books can't support a defensible WIP schedule, you hear that from us before you've spent your credibility on it. The first ninety days on a messy book is cleanup, not insight, and we'd rather set that expectation with you than have it surprise your client.
The return
Why it's worth your time
A contractor whose numbers hold up between renewals is a contractor you can place, re-place, and grow capacity for. Clean records make an account marketable. Messy ones get quoted defensively or declined.
Make the introduction
Tell us where
the client needs help.
An introduction starts a conversation. The free Financial Risk Assessment is required before either side commits, and the contractor keeps the findings and the plan.